


Have a Little Faith in Me

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Divergent, Cisco left after the explosion, F/M, Killervibe Week, and he's not in a good place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 11:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20435600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: After the explosion at Star Labs, Cisco left, his confidence shattered by the guilt and shame of what happened that night.Months later, after Barry Allen wakes up, Caitlin goes looking for Cisco to tell him what he's missed.Written for Killervibe Week Day 2: Canon Divergent





	Have a Little Faith in Me

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot to mention this on Tumblr, but all credit and praise to Hedgi for helping me think through what Cisco's state of mind would be in this situation. Mwah!

The barista squinted at the cup. “I’ve got a caramel macchiato for … Sicko?”

“It’s Cisco,” he said. 

The barista squinted again and plopped it on the counter. “Looks like Sicko to me.” He turned away, already reaching for the cup belonging to the next schmuck whose name he would butcher.

“Whatever,” Cisco grumbled, snatching the drink. He growled to himself, regretting the dollar he’d stuffed in the tip jar. He was here every morning. It was his treat for the day, his self-bribe to keep getting up and putting on a tie and arriving at an office at eight sharp. 

You’d think that they could get his name right once in awhile.

“Cisco?” a voice said behind him.

He stopped in the act of taking his first sip. That voice …

“Cisco,” she said again. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

He turned. “Caitlin,” he said. “Oh my god. Hey. Hi. Hi!" 

Automatically, he moved to hug her, and then stopped. He hadn’t seen her in months, and she’d never been the kind to bestow hugs every which way.

But she smiled at him and stepped up close, putting her arms around him first. He hugged her back, relaxing into her for a moment before pulling away. 

"How are you doing?” he said. “What’s new?” He kept hold of her arm, studying her. She’d been in a better place the last time they’d talked, but considering she’d lost her fiance in the explosion at Star Labs nine months ago, that wasn’t saying much.

Guilt squirmed in his stomach. He should have been there more. Should have texted, should have made time to hang out - god, how long had it been? June? Four months. He was the worst.

She looked better. There was more color in her cheeks, and she seemed to have lost more of the horrible knotted tightness around her eyes and mouth, as if she were holding herself together by will alone. Not the happy, bright-eyed woman she’d been before December, but then, who was?

“A lot,” she answered his question. “But how are you?”

He shrugged and dropped his hand, taking a sip of his drink. “Oh, you know. Doing the nine to five, office cubicle thing. It’s thrilling.”

“You’re working for the city, right?”

_(“It’s good, steady work, mijo, and you need that. They really need people who can speak Spanish. It’s practically guaranteed, your cousin says. What kind of engineering firm is ever going to hire you without your degree, and with Star Labs on your resume? After what they did. Work for the city, get some good steady dependable job experience under your belt. They’ll pay for school if you want to go back to school. Did you know that? Just be realistic for once in your life.”)_

“Yeah, yeah, the planning department,” he said. 

“How do you like it?”

Shuffling permits all day long? Staring at a database until his eyes crossed? Having to turn someone down because they hadn’t checked the right box? Even thinking about it made him want to cry with boredom. 

He avoided her eyes. “Government holidays off, good benefits, and I get a paycheck every two weeks like clockwork.” Easily half what Star Labs had paid, and had promised to keep paying after the accelerator had blown. But he’d been seduced by the siren song of building his resume and going back for his engineering degree and erasing the stain of being part of that explosion.

And making his parents proud of him for once.

Caitlin hadn’t said anything, and he looked up. She had her head cocked in that way she had, and her eyes were filled with concern.

He stumbled into speech. “So - you? Are you still there? How’s, uh, things? You said there was, and I quote, ‘a lot’ that was new. Fill me in!”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Do you have a few minutes right now? Are you on your way to work?”

“I mean, yeah, but I’ve got plenty of time. We can catch up.”

He deliberately didn’t look at the clock over the door, warning him that he had to leave basically now if he wanted to clock in on time.

She found a table and slid onto the high stool. He followed suit. It all felt warm and familiar and he could almost forget that the past nine months had even happened.

Almost.

“So,” he said brightly. “Yeah. What’s the scuttlebutt? You’re still there?”

She nodded. “Me and Dr. Wells. And there’s a couple of new additions. Sort of new. You remember Barry?”

“Barry …” he said slowly.

“The man that Dr. Wells insisted on bringing to Star Labs? He was in the hospital, he’d gotten struck by lightning the night of - well, that night?“

"You mean Coma Guy?”

“He has a name. Barry Allen. And he’s not in a coma anymore.”

“Well, that’s good. But he’s still hanging around? Doesn’t he have a life? I remember he had like people visiting him and - ”

“Yes,” Caitlin said. “Well, that’s kind of what I was leading up to.” She looked around. “Iris!” She waved, and a pretty black woman paused in wiping down a table to come over.

“Hey,” she said, settling her busing bin on her hip. “On your way in?”

“Yes, but I wanted Cisco to meet you. Or meet you again. Cisco, you remember Iris?”

He squinted at her for a moment. She worked here, he knew that, but suddenly he realized he’d seen her before that. “Wait, you’re Co- Barry’s friend. Aren’t you?” _Not _his girlfriend, she’d clarified at the time, and not his foster sister even if it was technically true. Just his friend.

_The lady doth protesteth too mucheth_, Cisco had told Caitlin at the time, and she’d wrinkled her nose at him.

“Right,” Iris said. “You were at Star Labs, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “For awhile. Sorry I never said hi before. I knew you looked familiar but I didn’t know why.”

“No big,” Iris said. “Nobody’s ever at their best before coffee. So you’re working somewhere else now? Where did you go?”

“Oh, another job. I heard your friend’s awake. Awesome.”

“Yeah, we’re pretty stoked.” She shot Caitlin a look.

Caitlin leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Can you take your break right now?”

Iris looked horrified. “At prime caffeine time like this? If I took a break now, somebody would drown me in the dishwasher, and I wouldn’t even blame them.”

“Oh, right. Well, could I borrow your phone then?”

Iris’s eyes went to Cisco, and then back to Caitlin. “You want to show him?”

Caitlin nodded.

Her face scrunched up. “I don’t know. Weren’t we going to -”

“It’s not like I plan to play it on the big screen for the whole shop. He needs to understand. He’s so, so good at fixing things and coming up with things - ”

Cisco took a drink, ducking his head. He hadn’t tinkered with anything in months. Hadn’t even picked up a spanner since the end of summer. 

Caitlin, unaware, kept trying to convince Iris. “He’ll be able to help. I know it.”

Curiosity sparked. Help? Help with what?

Iris sighed. “Okay. Here.” She pulled a phone out of her apron pocket and laid it on the table, keying in her code to wake it up. “I gotta go. I’ll be back.” She shot Cisco a wary glance and then turned to weave her way through the crowds to the counter.

Cisco goggled after her. The two women had spoken to each other in the low whispers and half-references of friends. He leaned across the table to Caitlin. “Since when are you BFFs with Coma Guy’s smoking hot not-a-girlfriend?”

“Her name is Iris, and she’s nice,” Caitlin said, navigating Iris’s phone with a line between her brows. “And we got to know each other after you left. We both needed someone to talk to, so we talked to each other.”

Cisco dropped his eyes.

“Hey,” Caitlin said, looking up. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

“I’m not doing anything,” he said.

“I don’t blame you for leaving. You did what you had to do. I told you that then, and I’m telling you that now.”

“Okay,” he mumbled, still staring at the smudge of drying coffee on his plastic lid. “What is it you wanted to show me?”

Caitlin looked around and then held out the phone, where a video was starting up. Silently.

“What is this, 1921?” Cisco asked her. “I can’t hear anything.”

She rolled her eyes and cranked up the volume two measly notches.

The slightly wavering video panned across a trailer with the Star Labs logo, and a tent with all manner of gadgetry set up underneath. Cisco caught a glimpse of a man with glasses and tousled dark hair, tapping something into a keyboard with one hand while the other hand rested lightly on the controls of his wheelchair.

His stomach twisted with guilt.

_If you’d been better at your job,_ said a voice that sounded a lot like his pop’s, _if you’d known what the hell you were doing, that wouldn’t have happened._

The video panned away from Dr. Wells, across Caitlin who was pushing her wind-tossed hair back with one hand as she studied something on a tablet. 

“Caitlin,” said the camera operator. “Wave!”

Caitlin looked up, her brows scrunched together. “Iris, you’re filming this?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“I don’t know - ”

“Come on, I’m not putting it on Facebook. I just think we should have a record of this.”

Caitlin looked over her shoulder at Dr. Wells, who said, “I don’t see the harm.” He smiled and waved for the camera. “Is our star ready?”

“I’ll go see.” The camera came to rest on the trailer’s door, and Iris’s hand knocked. It opened to reveal Coma Guy - Barry - in a very, very tight red wrestling onesie, knee pads, elbow pads, helmet, and goggles. 

Cisco let out a snort of laughter. “What is that? Why’s he in that getup?”

“You’ll see,” Caitlin said.

“Oh my god,” Barry said on the screen, holding his hand up like he was avoiding the paparazzi. “Put that down. Quit it.”

Iris laughed. “What’s wrong? Don’t want the world to see what you’ve got?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.” He tugged at the spandex, grimacing.

Caitlin came into view, fingers busy on a tablet. “If Dr. Wells is right, you’ll be moving too fast for anyone to see anything.” She pressed a sensor to his chest and held up a flat black disc. “This is a two-way headset with a camera. It’s been modified - ”

“Hey,” Cisco said. “Hey, that’s mine! I made it!”

“You left it there,” Caitlin said as her on-screen self continued explaining the headset and the sensors she was applying to Barry’s helmet and his chest. “We thought it would be okay if we used it.”

“Sure,” Cisco said, staring at the screen. “Yeah, but - why? I made it for soldiers, to cut out battlefield noise. Is he going into battle? Like that?”

“Watch,” Caitlin said.

Dr. Wells was warning Barry to have restraint, and Cisco’s heart lurched. That fatherly mix of support and caution. _Don’t work too late, sleep is important. May I double-check your figures? Excellent work, Mr Ramon. _

He’d missed that.

He didn’t deserve that.

Barry walked toward a couple of starting blocks and went down into the stance of a high-speed runner about to start a race.

And then -

It was hard to figure out exactly what happened. One moment, Barry was crouched on the starting blocks, bouncing a little bit. The next, there was an audible whoosh of wind that, if the wild spinning and bouncing of the camera was any judge, knocked Iris flat on her ass. 

“Oh my god,” Iris said, while the camera faced the sky, filming the blizzard of papers caught in the sudden, inexplicable wind. “Oh my god!” Her hands grabbed the camera again and held it up to capture the red blur far down the runway. “Caitlin, how fast is he going?”

“Two - no - three hundred miles per hour,” said Caitlin’s disbelieving voice. “And accelerating.”

Cisco’s mouth fell open as the video ended. 

He looked up. The real Caitlin was still watching him, eyes bright.

“That,” he said, and had to stop to take a breath. “Tell me that was real.”

“One hundred percent,” she said.

“How fast?”

“On that test? He broke four hundred fifty miles an hour.” She made a face. “Then he ran into some water barrels and broke his wrist.”

Cisco grimaced. “Sucks for him.”

“It healed in under three hours.”

Superspeed, super healing - “That’s so fucking _coooool_,” he breathed. “Hey, can he - ”

His phone, buried in his pocket, buzzed. He pulled it out. A text glared at him from the screen: _You’re late._

**Sorry, caught in traffic, **he texted back very quickly, and set the phone down. “That was my boss. I have to go. I’m late to work, and this is the fourth time this month, so … you know.”

“Oh,” Caitlin said. “Oh of course.”

He got up, checking to make sure he had all his stuff, shooting one last regretful glace at the phone. There was a real live superhero in Central City and he had to go shuffle papers before he got his ass fired. Just his luck.

“Before you go, though,” Caitlin said. “Do you think you could maybe stop by Star Labs sometime? Like, today? Or tomorrow?”

“What, to see the fastest man alive? Hell, yeah!”

She smiled. “Well, to see him, and - ” She fussed with her cup. “The thing is, Cisco, we could really use your help.”

He blinked. “Mine?”

“Yes. Yours. He’s already burnt out two treadmills, and the headset flew off somewhere in the river gorge when he was doing a distance run and it took us three days to find it. And the other day Dr. Wells had to bulk-buy running shoes because Barry wears through them like a ballet dancer - ”

He clutched the bottom edge of his jacket. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“You fix things,” she said. “You invent things. I’m working on the physiological effects of his speed, but there’s so many places I can see mechanical solutions. None of us have the skills for it. But you do.”

He looked away. “You don’t need me. Dr. Wells is smart. He can think up solutions.”

“He’s smart, but he’s not you.” She put on a smile. “Please, Cisco-Wan Kenobi? You’re my only hope.”

“Caitlin, I -” He fiddled with the lid of his coffee, scraping his thumb over a rough spot on the plastic edge. “I don’t really do that stuff anymore.”

The hopeful smile faded. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, I got this new job. And it’s like, I’m doing that all day, and then I get home and I’m just fried, so really all I want to do is watch TV - ”

That was all true. But he used to do fourteen-hour days at Star Labs and come back the next day with an idea he’d sketched in the middle of the night. And from the doubt and confusion on Caitlin’s face, she remembered that too.

He zipped up his jacket. “I just don’t have that mojo anymore.”

“Maybe if you helped us out, you’d find it.”

“Helped you do what, though? Like, what are you even doing, now that Barry’s awake? Testing him? Seeing how fast he can run?” Three hundred miles an hour. Daaaaaaamn. He wished he could be there to see that.

“More than that. Iris and Barry have both been gathering stories of weird things going on since the explosion. Have you heard about those?”

“I mean - rumors.”

“They’re more than rumors. It really seems like a lot of people might have been affected by that explosion, in strange ways, and a lot of them are using their powers for crime. Barry wants to find them. Stop them." 

He caught his breath. "Like - a superhero?”

She shrugged. “If you want to call it that. Dr. Wells calls Bary and all the other people who were changed metahumans.”

Dr. Wells. Whose life work had gone up in flames.

“Look, I - “ He swallowed. “I just don’t think I can help you.“

"I really think you can.”

“No. Really. I wish I could. But I don’t think I should.”

“Why not?”

“Ronnie’s dead!”

She went white and Cisco felt like he’d slapped her. Then her lips pressed together. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

“I know you know that. And he wasn’t the only one. People dead, people injured. Dr. Wells is in a wheelchair for life. That guy, Barry, he was in a coma for months. Now you’re telling me people have been turned into - ” He flailed. “Like, supervillains. Because of what happened at Star Labs. That’s on me, Caitlin. Forever.”

“It wasn’t just you,” she said.

“What if it was? What if it was my fuckup that sent everything to hell?”

She countered, “What if it was mine?”

His answer popped out without conscious thought. “There’s no way.”

“Why not? If this could all be your fault, it could just as easily be mine. I was working there too. Or maybe it was Ronnie. Or Dr. Wells. Why couldn’t it be their fault?”

“Because - ” He stopped.

“Because it was too big,” she said softly. “The project was massive. So many fail-safes and redundancies, and that still happened. I don’t know why, but I know it wasn’t because of you or me or any other one person.”

“We were still all part of it,” he mumbled.

“We were. And we all have to atone for it. But that’s not going to happen by punishing ourselves. We have to do something good for the world now. To try and help fix it.”

By helping a superhero. 

For a moment it caught him. He pictured himself as the guy in the chair, fighting crime, backing up a man who was more than a man.

Then his stomach turned over. How many ways could he possibly fuck that up too?

"Cisco,” she said, and he looked back. “Dr. Wells asked me to find you. To let you know how much we needed your help. But even if he hadn’t, I would have looked for you.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just - I can’t anymore.”

She bit her lip, studying him. "Okay,” she said.

“Okay?”

“Yes. You seem pretty sure. I’m not going to push you anymore.”

“Oh. Uh. Thanks.” It felt empty, though. A hollowness right in the pit of his stomach. 

“It’s been really nice to see you, though.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s not go another four months. I’ll text you, okay? We’ll hang.”

“Sure,” she said, subdued. She reached into her purse and pulled out a brown paper sack wrapped into a bundle. “Oh, and you left this there, if you want it back.”

He reached out to pick it up. “I did? What is it?" 

But when he looked up, she was gone.

* * *

Although the early morning caffeine hounds had mostly cleared out, it still took him a few minutes to find Caitlin, because he’d stuck his head outside and looked up and down the sidewalk. But she hadn’t even gone that far, just around the corner of the counter. 

Iris, leaning over from the employee side as she wiped everything down, saw him first. Caitlin noticed her gaze and turned just as Cisco was reaching out to tap her on the shoulder. She smiled when she saw him. 

He held up the contents of the package she’d left with him - the headset that she’d put on Barry in the video. "You ain’t slick.”

She studied it, then looked up with a little smile. “I think I am, though.”

He scowled at her briefly, just enough to let her know he was onto her, then studied the headset. “This worked?”

“It worked really well,” Iris said.

“Until it got lost in the river gorge,” he said. “It just flew off?”

“Clearly, the model needs improvement,” Caitlin said. 

“And repair.” He picked at a little bit of dirt ground into a crevice.

“Yes, it does.”

“And you know, I can do better." 

"I do know that,” Caitlin said.

He ran his fingers over it. He’d forgotten how this felt. Holding something he’d made, something that helped, something that solved a problem in a clever and interesting way. 

In the cold, dead place where his mechanical mojo had lived until nine months ago, something small and hopeful poked its head above ground. “You really think I can help,” he said.

“I know you can.”

“What if I screw it up?”

“Then you’ll fix that too.” She put her hand on his arm. “I have faith in you.”

The simple words wrapped something soft and warm around his heart. He studied the headset again. “This is kind of boring for a superhero,” he said. “We need something to jazz it up.”

“Like some kind of color scheme?”

“Definitely a color scheme, but I’m thinking logo. Lightning bolt, maybe.”

“So you’ll come to Star Labs after work?” Iris asked, her eyes bright.

“Are you going there now?” he asked Caitlin.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes widening. 

“Can I come with?”

“What about your job?”

“Right,” he said. “Right, right. I knew I forgot something.” He pulled out his phone, which was blazing with yet more peevish texts from his boss. He dialed. “Hey, Doug,” he said.

“Ramon,” Doug growled. “You walk to work. What the hell kind of traffic could you possibly run into? You’re half an hour late. You know, you’re still on your probationary period - ”

“Yeah, about that,” Cisco said. “I quit.”

Caitlin dropped the scone she’d been about to bite into, and Iris’s eyes lit with laughter.

“You need to give two weeks’ notice,” Doug said.

“Or what? You’ll fire me? I quit. I’m never stepping foot in that building again. You can clear out my desk and throw it all in the trash, I don’t give a shit.”

“But - you - we - ”

“Bye, Doug,” Cisco said, and hung up. 

“Cisco!” Caitlin said, scandalized. “You can’t just -”

“It was the most miserable job I’ve ever had, and I once literally dug ditches for a summer,” Cisco said, taking a deep swig of his macchiato. “So. Are we gonna go meet your superhero or what?”

FINIS


End file.
